In a digital age, millions of people spend so much of their time poking around digital platforms. Businesses are becoming increasingly aware of this fact and therefore leveraging on the popularity of these platforms to promote their goods and services. How does your business leverage on this?
Marketing is the act of connecting with customers with a bid to convince them towards buying a product or subscribing to a service. Marketing, in whatever form, is one of the key activities that every business must partake in, as no business can survive without effective marketing and publicity. Marketing refers to activities undertaken by a company to promote the buying or selling of a product or service. Marketing includes advertising, selling, and delivering products to consumers or other businesses.
If the objective of your business is to sell more products or services, then marketing is what helps you achieve that goal. Anything that you use to communicate with your customers in a way that persuades them to buy your products or services is marketing, including advertising, social media, coupons, sales and even how products are displayed. Marketing is the process of teaching consumers why they should choose your product or service over those of your competitors. The key to successful marketing is finding the right marketing strategy (including your message, timing, and method of communication) to reach and influence your consumers.
Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium.
The Benefits of Digital Marketing to Business
Digital marketing is a way to promote brands and products online and through other digital channels. Most businesses have a specific audience they are trying to reach, and digital marketing aims to help businesses reach these target consumers through the internet and other digital avenues.
There are a number of different digital technologies that marketers and companies use to get their marketing message to their target audience. In addition to their website, a company might also use PPC and display ads, email marketing, mobile technology like smartphones, social media, and other mediums to attract and engage their target consumers.
Other benefits of Digital Marketing includes:
Informed Decision with the Valuable Data and Analytics: With digital marketing, you can have an idea of the exact number of people who have viewed your website’s homepage in real time. With google analytics, you can track stats and information about your marketing website. It will let you know about?—?the number of people visiting your business page their geographic location the sex, age and interests of the visitors how much time they are spending on your site the source of traffic from various gadgets website bounce rates how the traffic has changed over time
Higher Revenues: It’s a well-known fact that higher conversion rates can be generated by effective digital marketing techniques. Hence, it will deliver loads of profitable benefits for your business in terms of better and higher revenues. While advertising your brand, you’re sure of getting influx of revenues from Ads and marketing strategy channels.
Compete with Large Corporations: Digital marketing shouldn’t sound as foreign as binary code to you. Don’t worry if you are dealing even with a small industry. The importance of digital marketing also lies in the fact that it lets you compete head to head with big brands and large corporations. From a small vendor to a large powerhouse, digital marketing offers an affordable and effective marketing tactics. Small brands can drive traffic both locally and across the country by reaching out to their target consumers.
Earn Trust and Build Brand Reputation: Digital Marketing leverages on social media signals, social proof and testimonials availed from bonafide consumers. The more reliable these social signals are, the higher the trust rate it can generate from targeted audiences. People would trust information about a particular brand if the data comes from people they know. And once you meet their expectations, your brand reputation will go viral. Eventually, it will open new doors of opportunities for reaching bigger markets. Businesses can use their digital platforms to build their company’s brand and reputation. A well-developed website, a blog featuring quality and useful articles, a social media channel that is highly interactive are some of the ways by which a business can build its brand.
Conclusion
It’s not easy as business to invest time in Digital Marketing and its Channels. Regardless, if you’re not yet utilizing the power of digital marketing for your business, you are missing a lot of golden opportunities.
The importance of education in our nation cannot be overemphasized or underestimated. This is because it helps in the all-round growth and development of an individual as well as the society at large.
If we fail to uphold the principle of proper education, all we would be left with is unsatisfactory individuals being stirred out of our educational institutions.
The fact that the world today is a global village means that products of Nigerian institutions will tend to contend with students from other parts of the world in spite of their nonchalant attitude and lack of seriousness towards education. Teachers and authorities have plagued the educational sector over the years.
The Nigerian student has to prove that in a country stigmatized and often referred to as being corrupt, and also with a dilapidated educational system, can stand at par or shoulders above peers from other nations.
However, the problem with the falling standard of education is ”Examination Malpractice”.
This can be defined as an action taken before, during or after an examination that can render the results invalid.
This could involve entering the exam hall with foreign materials, copying another candidate, impersonation, exchanging answer booklets, inappropriate conversations, examiner bribery, amongst others.
Someone asked whether it is possible to end examination malpractice in Nigeria? Before I answer the question, I asked what made him say that, and he shared his story.
He told me when he wanted to rewrite WAEC in 2015, he enrolled in a private school in order to pass the exam. He said he was told that private schools have a good reputation when it comes to O’Level examination compared to a public school. The only difference – you pay more in private schools.
When the examination started, the invigilator left the school premises and the chemistry teacher wrote all the solution for them on the board. Two hours later, the WAEC invigilator came back and asked if they are through. He collected every answer booklet from the students and left with a brown envelope that indicated a bribe.
Examination malpractice is very rampant in our educational system in Nigeria. The disappointing part, it is both in the public or private school sector. Examination malpractice starts from primary to secondary school and still continues at the tertiary level. Examination malpractice leads to corruption later on in life.
Ways to Minimize Examination Malpractice
Schools should employ good teachers: I observe that some schools have incompetent teachers. Some teachers don’t know how to teach. Teaching is a form of communication that entails passing knowledge. If the teacher lacks good communication skills, it would be very difficult for students to learn.
Parents instigation: Some parents instigate their children to be part of examination malpractice. Even some parents pay money for their children in order to pass. They call it runs. That’s so sad. I think if parents can stop encouraging their children by paying for their examinations runs, it would minimize the high rate of examination malpractice. Students would sit tight and pass.
There should be penalties for examiners/invigilators by the government: I think most of our examiners are the anchor of examination malpractices. Immediately they’ve been offered a little amount of money, they allow the students to indulge in examination malpractice. If there is a heavy penalty (let’s say 20 years imprisonment) by the government, the rate of examination malpractice will reduce as well.
Computer-based examination: When the high rate of examination malpractice is unbearable for JAMB, they adopt the computer-based examination which has helped tremendously in reducing the high rate of examination malpractice. I think the government can implement this in every school.
A better Nigeria starts with corrupt-free students. If the leaders of tomorrow are taking the easiest route to success, what becomes of the nation’s tomorrow?
Chinedu Junior Ihekwoaba, I feel your pains on this one. Lionel Messi does not deserve to win FIFA Men’s Player of the Year. That he won it is unfortunate. Messi is GOAT (greatest of all time) but 2019 did not belong to him. Also, 2019 was not for C. Ronaldo.
For the fact that Samuel Eto’o (of Cameroon) never won anything of value (from FIFA) and Jay Jay Okocha never ruled African football with African footballer of the year, I have come to see football awards as part of entertainment.
Do not put much in those awards! You may be surprised that N. Ekekwe could win Ballon d’Or in December. My understanding is that Virgil Van Dijk begins with “V” and Ndubuisi begins with “N”. And when the ballot goes to N, light will go out and I will be awarded the award. On my return to Lagos, I will melt the “hardware” and create replicas of 20 million: everywhere you go, Ballon d’Ors. Now, you are playing!
The Federation Internationale de Football Association, FIFA, has always been political when it comes to honouring players that have performed well.
The just-concluded prestigious award in Milan is a good example of the politics that exists in the international governing body of association football.
Lionel Messi won the FIFA Men’s Player of the Year. Like seriously, ahead of the Liverpool and Dutch center half, Virgil Van Dijk, and five times Ballon D’or Winner, Cristiano Ronaldo.
Pep Guardiola missed out on the Manager of the Year Award to Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp despite his domestic treble-winning season. That’s a joke.
The shocker – none of the Man City players made the FIFA Players Pro XI, that is, the team of the year and Liverpool left-back, Andrew Robertson didn’t make the team. What’s Sergio Ramos doing in the team? Still finding it difficult to believe.
Juventus Cristiano Ronaldo should have even won that award ahead of Barcelona Lionel Messi considering the fact that he had a good season with Juventus despite he just joined them, and also won the Euro Nations League.
Lionel Messi also had a good season by winning the Spanish League with Barcelona and came third in the Copa America with Argentina, but that wasn’t enough reason to be given the gong.
Virgil Van Dijk, a worthy winner has been robbed by the ever political FIFA just like his fellow Dutch, Wesley Sneijder. Sneijder was robbed in 2010 after a stellar performance with Inter Milan and Netherlands. Virgil helped Liverpool to win the UEFA Champions League last season. Besides that, he was not dribbled past all through the season. That’s unbelievable for a defender that played against quality strikers. It should also be noted that Liverpool lost only one game in the Premier League, which was down to the solid performance shown by the former most expensive defender. With Virgil claiming the PFA Player of the Year, Premier League Player of the Year, and UEFA Player of the Year, there’s no worthy winner than him.
Although Lionel Messi is a quality player, the Argentine doesn’t deserve the accolade he got last night. He’s always favoured by the International governing body of association football. We’ve seen scenarios where he has won when he should not even make the list. He’s always favoured over Cristiano Ronaldo.
The two players, Ronaldo and Messi are world-class players that we’ve ever seen in football history, no doubt, but I think some players deserve the award over them in some cases like that of Frank Ribery, Wesley Sneijder and Virgil Van Dijk.
Let’s hope to see a free and fair FIFA Awards in the future.
Congratulations to Lionel Messi and other professional players and managers that won an award last night in Milan.
Imagine if all software acquisitions by the Federal Government for Nigeria are purchased by one office, and then shared by the MDAs (ministries, departments and agencies).
We would save money, fixing the problem which exists today where every unit of government acquires its own software. Yes, it is very painful reading public tenders with clusters of wastes. You see waste because no one is harmonizing simple acquisition of technology assets. This extends beyond software; simply, a redesign will save Nigeria money.
In 2017, I suggested for Nigeria to appoint a national Chief Information Officer, by updating the role of either the DG of NIMC (National Identity Management Commission) or DG of NITDA (National Information Technology Development Agency) with no new bureaucracy required. That message was picked up by many industry stakeholders.
What is happening in telcos is happening in Immigration, Drivers License Office and clusters of entities across Nigeria where they continue to capture biometrics. I do think that Nigeria may need to redesign the Acts that govern NITDA (National Information Technology Development Agency) and NIMC (National Identity Management Commission) to deal with many pressing issues on technology and data management. If we collapse them as one, we can have an Office of Chief Information Officer, for Federal Republic of Nigeria; call it National Chief Information Officer (NCIO). The present Director-General of NIMC can assume that office as NIMC has more roles in the consolidation of the disparate databases in Nigeria, and certainly more strategic than NITDA.
There is an update – government has indeed acted: any DG of NITDA will also in parallel serve as the Chief Information Officer of Nigeria (just knowing that!). Now, let’s make it work for Nigeria and not just another title. Yes, we can eliminate procurement corruption via harmonizing data as I noted in this “address”.
